V.

• Part 2

• 11:09:17 pm on November 5, 2009 | # | 45
  

  The sound of deep guttural moans is constantly present; emanating from somewhere off in the distance, past the mountains. Every day they seem to get a little louder. A little closer.

  John Magnusson has grown accustomed to the noxious drone and watches the corpse hanging from the cross try to move its atrophied limbs. He adjusts his black suede Outback style hat over his thinning gray hair.

  John reaches inside his long black leather coat and pulls one of his powder-coated-black revolvers from a homemade leather shoulder holster. Bullet belts loaded with both .45 and shotgun ammunition crisscrosses a faded black dress shirt hanging un-tucked over an old pair of blue jeans. Two 8-inch throwing daggers are strapped to each leg. On his back is a 12 gauge shotgun, its wooden stock within arms reach.

  He pulls one of the revolvers and takes aim. The middle of the cross explodes in a bloom of splinters and dust. As the body drops, he fires a second shot straight in to its head. He re-holsters the rifle, but not before swinging out the cylinder and replacing the spent cartridges. He is careful not to throw away the empty shells, instead he pockets them; he can repack them and use them again. In this world, nothing is wasted except for human life.

  With his attention focused back on the church, he sees that he can gain entrance through a burned out hole on the side of the church that is just big enough to walk through. He steps over scorched debris and burnt rubble until he reaches the center aisle of the church. He scans the room for anything worth taking. A marble alter covered in the ashen remains of a bible and alter cloths stands solemnly in the center of the blackened pulpit. He eyes it for a moment then approaches it.

  As he walks down the church’s main aisle, he finds himself remembering the first days of the outbreak. Billions of people around the world huddled in churches just like this one. They thought they were safe, but they were wrong. God didn’t protect them and when the dead came for them, they hadn’t much work. From sanctuary to slaughterhouse; no church, mosque, temple, cathedral, or synagogue was safe from the armies of hungry reanimated corpses.

  Movement behind the alter catches his attention and he stops just short of the pulpit. He un-holsters a revolver and cocks the hammer before continuing.

  He steps in to the pulpit and walks around to the other side of the marble alter, nearly stepping on the churches pastor, or rather, what’s left of him. His arms and legs are missing and his torso is a half charred trunk of seared meat and bloated organs poking through ruptured skin.

  A blackened, fly-blown face covered in squirming fruit fly larvae looks up at him. It opens its decaying mouth; biting at the air with teeth that are yellow and black. John shakes his head in disgust.

  Pathetic he thinks. He never liked priests much, even in the years before the outbreak. He thought of most of them as lecherous cowards. A glint of light catches his eye and he notices the melted remains of a gold crucifix on the priest’s chest and swipes it from the corpse. He pockets it then moves on to the back of the church.

  An ornate wooden cabinet, slightly charred, stands between two enormous stained glass windows depicting the birth and crucifixion of Christ. The entire area is spattered in the clotted remnants of the bloodbath that had gone down in the congregation’s final hours.

  John approaches the cabinet, and without a second thought, yanks the door open. The small bronze lock mechanism securing the doors easily breaks and falls to the floor. Inside the cabinet are two large, gold chalices and several smaller silver chalices. He pulls a wadded up plastic bag from his pocket and begins to fill it with the contents of the cabinet. When he’s done he ties the bag off and leaves the church.